chi. like in energy.

i woke up terrified this morning, how the ceiling was hanging up there, above us, still, and then i didn’t know what to do with it, that ceiling and these still bodies, mine, hers, and these words, so many falling short in more than five letters, and dark that isn’t dark, and what i imagine will be branches outside later on that will be swinging, or swaying( i guess it’s swaying when they are branches or childhood hair or when we are dying in hunger on the desert not many yards from a broken down buick, beige diesel), but there are stars, stars, yellow and rusted, lifted with pale arms on the other end of this stretch of floor that can’t be reached without a chair, like suns, like pixelated reimaginings of the moment he, dad, stood on our rooftop, between the door and the barbecue grill, facing three-quarters away, hands going into the pockets of his green pants, saggy and folded over his shrinking body, cowering from my screaming, my screaming, this rage when i learn that he is failing at hiding how mom is dying in pieces, when i hate everthing that touches me, warm skin then cold, bones that bend without noise, like him, the lips that whimper, swaying swaying like that thing in that place outside of us, ceiling and downstair cases and white shelves of autumns that leave while we disagreed about progress; the shadows that shifted an inch on the red tile floor one summer in 79, the buttons in my hand made by him, the one in fear, failing, the one with the pockets that hold and release--still bodies of morning minus the inflection of her back and the direction of bent will and how the familiarity of this bed beneath us means something that we are trying to embrace, like morning light that is not light, like a blue pencil held against the bridge of a nose in laughter, how i thought it was blue but i see that it is brown (what else have i been wrong about, what have i misjudged in the blinding light, searched and found), these things that i hold in sleep to keep them from being born, unbirthing my parents before it’s too late, and how i wake her from her sleep, make her dress for an outing, not the one next to me, but hours after that one is gone, how i tell her we will meet on the sidewalk of los angeles, once empty, then filled, empty again when it’s early enough and cold enough, and guide her to a table in the sun, the sun on her back, sipping our drinks, splitting a sandwich as she points at a large man and says that he, that large man can eat this whole sandwich but she can’t, counting the ingredients, pausing at avocado, as i check the time, desperate to revise this story from the start before the end, pointing at a brick in the wall, tell her that it is a good brick, that brick is what i like, that brick can be used to build us, that brick, and she says, that is a good brick, it is like the brick when i was young, and i say, which brick is that, and she says the brick before she got married, before she had us, and pauses, and she says let’s change the subject and i say let’s change everything and she says how about that brick, that brick i told you about, the one that we lost before you came, and i say, mouth full, i say i know, i think of that brick every week and how it reminds me of the one that my wife carried, this brick that we had planned to build walls on, build a house, a church, a castle, stairs, i say i remember but this is the moment, i tell her, mom this is the moment where we can rebuild on this brick, like you told me when i was a child, how i would one day save us all, save us all, and gave me a pen and told me the stories and put in my hands the brick and said go, go, save us all, save us all, and start it with a word less than five letters in the dark that holds the light of the morning to come.